Poem Anticipating Empty Nest

Upstate Spring in May

Upstate Spring in May

Our two indoor feral cats crouch in an open window
half believing their good luck--they're let out 
onto the porch all day
to stand against the screen and take in their surroundings
like captains on a deck, tigers in a cage,
claws clutching at the mesh.
We've kept the window open, 
and they come and go at will.
Naps and robin-watching, fancy feast and whippoorwills. 

Another day of rain. A Saturday at home.
Our daughter, 17 years of age, spent the night away
at Valentina's.
She's stricken with senioritis, off to college soon. 
Childhood was a winter: long and necessary, 
staying close to home. 
But spring is when it falls apart,
loosens, soaked, dissipates and spreads
bursting (un)ceremoniously as
time trips over its own laces, skipping forward
like a matrix glitch. Our hair is plastered to our faces. 

In the yard out front, daffodils and tulips
are drooping tattered
from three recent rains and age. 
Carpenter bees (most cartoonish of the genus)
have returned lately to the party.
The flowers have been up for ages,
but it's the boards they're after really:
they make our front porch holy.

A bobbing bee is a good first prey
for unpracticed indoor cats. 
They swat and watch it stumble
and pretend to look away.

Everything's going, going, gone.
To flower is to fall.
To ripen is to ruin.
I'm a tiger in a cage, clutching at the mesh,
as I watch her fly away.

Boo-hoo. She'll be fine!
And so will I. 
Spring is a happy time, don't they say?
 ... blossoms and fruit,
going forward without a care. 
Far flung offspring sprung. 
Teenager out of hair?

But please let the summer go slowly
like a honeybee drunk on nectar,
like an underwater comedy starring people,
or a slow-motion video of a dive into a pool,
the second stage of labor,
an interminable car ride through fields
of Timothy on either side,
a long breakfast on a Sunday,
a whole day on the shore of Cayuga Lake
at Buttercup Mansion (what we call the cottage),
and now lean against me heavy, darling, 
and we'll hold our breath
as we watch a hummingbird together--a bird in miniature,
a toy the world made--
turn three seconds to an hour.